Marvel: A Lazy-Ass Superman

Chapter 734: Chapter 734: Post-Battle Recovery

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At the secret base on the eleventh floor, there was one additional guest besides the mech operators who had returned from the sewers—Cassandra, the Falconer, whom Tina had invited over.

The mechs’ cleaning and maintenance were handled by the BB-3 and BB-4 units stationed here, so there was no need for everyone to do it themselves. At most, they would have to make a few adjustments to the finer details afterward.

Henry, meanwhile, was preparing dinner.

Cassandra wasn’t just an old acquaintance of Tina’s. Gilgamesh was also an old friend of hers. The three immortals were chatting away happily.

Alexei, the only one who had returned looking rather miserable, simply grabbed a beer and sat down at the small kitchen table, sighing as he drank.

While stir-frying the food, Henry asked, "What’s wrong? We won this battle decisively. The Continental Hotel’s people weren’t completely unscathed, but their casualties were far lower than originally expected.

"That’s all thanks to your plan and our support. And now you’re sitting there sighing. Do you think we didn’t do enough? Or that there was some major flaw?"

Alexei, who was sneaking fried chicken pieces with his beer, swallowed what was in his mouth.

"I went to rescue people."

"Yeah. So which do you think is worse—the shadows beneath the Beacon of Freedom or the cage beneath the Iron Curtain?"

Alexei said indignantly, "There are two kinds of people living in suffering.

"One kind consists of misguided weaklings. These people need a strong and capable leader to guide them out of their predicament and toward a better future.

"The other kind are scumbags. Everything they got, they deserved.

"Fortunately, before we set out, you suggested that we replace all our weapons with ones designed to fight vampires, and I agreed. If I’d had a few incendiary rounds today, I might have used every last one."

Henry frowned.

"Was it really that bad?"

"How do you think the humans who were imprisoned survived?"

Alexei only had to ask this rhetorical question, and Henry immediately understood what he meant—and thereby obtained the answer to his earlier question.

These humans had been captured and kept as livestock by Reapers, with a demon secretly manipulating things behind the scenes.

Could people in such circumstances really think about concepts like "maximizing efficiency" or "sustainable management"?

Even if everyone had brought their own food at the beginning, it wasn’t difficult to imagine what would happen once those supplies ran out.

For all he knew, that might even have been something Mephisto, the great demon, was happy to see.

After all, it could create more filthy, sinful souls.

He could even secretly tempt them with words and induce them to make verbal contracts. Those filthy souls would then have a definite owner.

Although Henry thought he had already witnessed the darkness beneath the sewers, his understanding had once again been overturned.

All he could do was sigh.

"The American Dream in the clouds is something everyone yearns for. This is the place where the world’s dreams can reach the highest heights.

"Hollywood. Wall Street. Beautiful California and Florida.

"It’s as though the moment you set foot on this land, you can live a dreamlike life straight out of a movie.

"But not many people realize that this so-called free world also has the lowest floor in the entire world.

"After all, the media that proudly proclaim their freedom of the press are even more enthusiastic about reporting the suffering of other countries while ignoring the darkness beneath their own feet.

"When people with money and free time start fooling around, there’s no limit to how low the bottom can go."

Alexei angrily spat out:

"Fuck America!"

"Hey, hey, swear all you want, but don’t spit on me. It’s unsanitary."

As he spoke, Henry took out a bottle of vodka and two empty glasses and poured them.

Alexei’s previously gloomy expression immediately brightened. His eyes lit up as he stroked his beard.

"Where were you hiding that? How come I couldn’t find it earlier?"

Henry filled both glasses and pushed one across the table. Setting down the bottle, he smiled.

"This is my ’secret’ base. If you guys knew everything that was here, what fun would there be?"

Ignoring the glass on the table, Alexei simply picked up the bottle and drank straight from it.

Henry gave a helpless smile, picked up his own glass of vodka, and downed it in one gulp.

The fiery liquor naturally couldn’t do anything to a Kryptonian’s liver, though the taste in his mouth was still extremely strong. Although he always claimed not to like the taste of hard liquor, there were times when nothing else was quite as appropriate.

The three immortals chatting nearby had also heard Henry and Alexei’s conversation.

The two hadn’t exactly been speaking quietly or trying to hide anything, after all.

So the three of them came over, with Cassandra in particular asking for more details.

Alexei described what he had seen.

The imprisoned humans weren’t kept densely packed together like pigs in a pen. Instead, an entire area had been designated for them to govern themselves.

There were a tremendous number of people.

Whenever the Reapers reached feeding time, they would go to the designated area and take away the food that had been offered up as sacrifices.

As for how the victims were selected, the corruption naturally lay in the hands of the humans responsible for managing the community.

When Alexei entered the settlement, he saw another vision of hell.

The piles of bones inside were no smaller than those outside.

In the end, a Spartan, a man from the Red Empire, a Kryptonian, and two Eternals raised their glasses and lamented as they shouted the same slogan:

"Fuck America!"

Even Kitty joined in with a mighty roar.

Post-battle dinner didn’t need to be particularly refined or delicious.

It just needed to be plentiful and filling.

So it was prepared rather quickly.

Before long, Henry had filled the table with a feast and called everyone over to eat.

The special meal he had promised Kitty would have to wait for another day. Tonight, she got nothing but huge chunks of bloody raw meat to replenish the energy she had burned running around all day.

Everyone else dug into large cuts of meat and huge bowls of food.

Knives, forks, chopsticks, and bare hands were all fair game. Whatever was convenient was what they used.

Unlike the others, who spent most of their time moving around inside mechs, Cassandra had traveled everywhere on her own two legs. Her physical activity had been the greatest of them all.

So she also ate the most heartily, without the slightest hint of feminine restraint.

By the time everyone had eaten and drunk their fill, the table was a complete mess of empty plates and glasses.

Only then did Cassandra bring up the old subject again.

"Henry, what’s the story between you and that demon?"

Alexei was startled.

"Wait! Where did another demon come from? What’s going on? Demons really exist?"

The Red Guardian’s understanding of the situation was rather limited.

Although Henry had admitted that he was an alien, Alexei simply regarded him as an invulnerable mutant. The others were incredibly powerful as well, but their backgrounds were unknown, so they might also be mutants.

In short, he didn’t know many details.

Magic-related matters were among the deepest secrets of this world.

After all, nobody had any way to explain the question: If magic and demons exist, then what about God?

So the simplest solution was to keep it hidden from the world.

When magic occasionally surfaced in public, explanations such as "an unidentified energy leak" were used to deceive people.

Besides, there were the mutants—the convenient scapegoats. There were already plenty of unexplained phenomena that could be blamed on them. Adding magic to the list wasn’t exactly a major problem.

That was why Alexei was asking such questions now.

Henry looked at the Russian giant as though he were looking at a gorilla.

"You killed plenty of those new vampires today. Is the existence of demons really that surprising?"

"No, what I mean is..."

After struggling for quite a while to find the right words, Alexei, never particularly eloquent, finally asked bluntly:

"They really exist?"

Henry nodded heavily.

"They really do. No need to doubt it."

"So, my question is, what exactly is the story between you and that demon?"

Cassandra asked the same question for the second time.

Henry took out a coin he carried with him and placed it on the table.

"This has something to do with the child I adopted, Skye."

He then told them the story of how he had used the Sparrow drones to track a troublesome little girl, thereby discovering New York’s underground world for the first time, encountering a dead Black girl and, eventually, the mixed-race girl he had adopted himself.

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